Providers of goods and services have as a key goal the ability to identify and target the right customers in the right fashion. The “holy grail” of advertising is a one-to-one relationship between the marketer and the consumer. Ideally this would be done by selecting the right customer, in the right place, at the right time, and tailoring advertising or other content to that customer to minimize cost and maximize efficiency. Marketers desire to deliver their message only to customers who are interested and receptive, with the message personalized to the particular customer. This problem is particularly acute for smaller advertisers, who may have only limited advertising budgets and may desire to target only a small and/or selective group of customers.
Traditional advertising media, has, for a number of reasons, provided limited ability to achieve these goals. For example, much traditional advertising has been focused on providing large scale brute force marketing. Television advertising typically targets general populations with only the limited possibility of tailoring based on particular audience demographics, time of day, or subject matter. This approach remains relatively coarse in targeting desirable customers and is typically quite expensive. Likewise, print media such as newspapers and magazines target general audiences, with limited potential for focusing on potential customers who are the “right” customers for particular content, products, or services. Focusing can be done based on the publication's subject matter, article positioning, markets served, or other focusing criteria; however, targeting is still typically coarse, inefficient and potentially costly, with little or no ability to personalize content presentation or implement behavioral targeting.
The advent of the Internet has introduced a new era in marketing and advertising. Using the Internet, advertisers are now able to enhance content delivery using means such as contextual targeting, message customization, easy and immediate response methods, more accurate performance measurement, performance-based billing, as well as limited ability to target based on geography. These approaches can make advertising more efficient and focused, and potentially allow for better target customization. For example, companies like Google and Yahoo have been successful at providing online advertising; however, their success is limited by the user's query (search request keywords and the like). Google's ad sense service is based on contextual ads but their analysis is based on web page content only.
The traditional Internet is still, however, largely limited to fixed locations (i.e. places where a user's desktop or portable computer can be operated in a static fashion) since computers are rarely carried by users while being operational and connected to the Internet. Moreover, computers are typically not truly personal devices because they are often shared with others.
Mobile phones, however, are truly personalized devices that tend to be on, connected to wireless networks, and in the user's possession at most times. This has led to the rapid growth and proliferation of mobile devices that combine characteristics of traditional mobile telephony with Internet capabilities.
Consequently, it is anticipated that the next step in the evolution of advertising will likely be focused on the mobile web and truly portable devices such as web enabled phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and similar devices. These devices and their associated wireless carrier services open the possibility for new, more efficient marketing and advertising methods wherein content providers can target customers in a much more efficient, granular fashion, and messages can be presented in a personalized fashion only to users who desire such content. Despite this promise, there are multiple carriers using different and/or proprietary systems that make it difficult for advertisers to target all potential users without engaging separately with these multiple carriers and navigating their various interfaces and requirements. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for providing targeted advertising and other content to mobile devices.